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Talk:Port of Shadows/@comment-68.119.196.53-20180924132052
Longtime fan of Cook's books, starting with The Black Company series, but all Instrumentalities o the Knight and The Dread Empire books and stories. This isn't the first time in The Black Company series that he's played with the annalist's perceived reality. We saw that in Bleak Seasons, where time jumps were a key issue. However, that book was pretty good on continuity. This one is more maddening. (SPOILERS FOLLOW) We have multiple problems with Croaker -- his perception of MIschievous Rain and others may be suspect, his memory keeps lapsing, he seems to write things as they happen and forget them before he could actually have set them down in his annals. Then we have the Long Ago sections without certainty about their supposed origin. They aren't "what actually happened" from some omniscient narrator or we wouldn't have the historical knowledge gap at the end of the last such chapter. They might be re-edited from the historical documents that Croaker found. It could be that whoever the annalistic narrator is in the discussion of what we really know section at the end is the source of these historical narratives. One possibility that no one has mentioned so far: The text reached its final form in the hands of a different Black Company Annalist -- The Lady! I think the implication that the "real" Mischievous Rain is really the Lady is strong and logically consistent. We know the Sendak names were a mess, so this can be excused. This would explain how Croaker really could have fathered the two not-children with Mischievious Rain. And the time of conception for them might even be about right, though with wierd time flow in the Tower that wouldn't be essential. Not sure about the fake Mischievous Rain, except that maybe she really was the original Tides Elba who was shipped off to the Tower. Mind-reading is only perceived by Croaker (more like face reading or just knowing how men think) and isn't occuring, which is why some secrets stay safe. At first The Lady pursues this mission in order to find the Port of Shadows. But after Croaker reads the historical documents, she realizes that this is the location of Papa's castle. So I think this explanation solves most of the issues. An issue that it doesn't solve is why Glen Cook wrote the book this way, which is fairly experimental. As a fan, but also one who is willing to criticize, I don't think this storytelling system was effective and believe it shows contempt for the readers. Having said that, most of the book was a good read and to the degree that I still cared, the ending was at least thought-provoking. I don't think it was on par with the best books in the series, but it was better than the weakest ones (which in my opinion were the second three volumes including the SIlver Spike). As someone else mentioned, the tone of this book is so different from Shadows Linger (which may be my favoriate) that it seems inconsistent. The Lady and Taken and Black Company characters of that book are mostly not the ones of this book, yet they happen only a short time apart. And why no mention there that the company has lost a year of its time? The appearance of continuity sloppiness seems hard to get around and should be a warning to any of us trying to over-analyze Port of Shadows -- you might be thinking about it more than Glen Cook did.